User:The owner of all/ACE2015

For those of y'all voting in the 2015 Arbitration Committee election, here's a short guide.

Full disclosure: I myself will not be voting because I am ineligible. Having recently returned from a long period of absence from Wikipedia, I do not have the required number of edits to be able to register a vote myself.

Now for the guide.

Voting system mathematics & strategy
The main thing to remember is how the mathematical aspects of the voting process affect the result. An ideal process would be as described here. The ArbCom system is almost exactly the same, however instead of tallying the votes as SUPPORT - OPPOSE we are using the formula SUPPORT/(SUPPORT+OPPOSE). Either way, the absolute minimum to win election is >50% support. The design of the system is to minimize tactical voting and allow voters to express a true opinion on each and every candidate, however the nature of this election plus the slight variation in the calculation means that the optimal strategy is slightly different.

Therefore, for one,

This is because it is better to have a vacant seat than it is to have that seat filled by an unqualified Arbitrator.

I agree with some others that for a given ArbCom election, the best strategy is to vote SUPPORT for the top n candidates, where n is the lesser of 1) the number of qualified candidates, or 2) the number of seats up for election; and vote OPPOSE on all others. The requirement to register a vote on all candidates means there is practically nothing to gain by voting ABSTAIN/NEUTRAL on any candidate. This year there are nine seats up for election so in no case would I vote to SUPPORT more than nine candidates.

Principles guiding my suggestions

 * ArbCom needs to be more effective. It needs people that are willing to make the hard decisions that the community has been unable to.
 * WP is not a social networking site, and in general I will support those who put their primary effort into improving the product for the reader, whether by improving articles, contributing files, improving organization of articles, etc. versus the non-article aspects of the site such as contributing to drama at WP:PITCHFORKS or elsewhere.
 * WP is not an advocacy platform and I will not be supporting candidates who clearly cannot see beyond their own bias in controversial issues as ArbCom is meant to be fair for all.
 * If candidates have shown that they should not be trusted with access to editors' private information then one must OPPOSE the candidate.

Support

 * From strongest support (1) to weakest support (9)
 * 1) Opabinia regalis
 * 2) Drmies
 * 3) NE Ent
 * 4) Rich Farmbrough
 * 5) Casliber
 * 6) Wildthing61476
 * 7) Keilana
 * 8) Kelapstick
 * 9) Timtrent

Oppose (including Neutral)

 * From neutral/weakest oppose (1) to strongest oppose (12)
 * 1)  Callanecc
 * 2) * No personal opposition to the candidate, but falls short of the top 9 candidates.
 * 3)  Kudpung
 * 4) * No personal opposition to the candidate, but falls short of the top 9 candidates.
 * 5)  Mahensingha
 * 6) * Primary factor cited for opposing is lack of experience. Agree with that sentiment, however no experience is better than a negative experience. If there were fewer candidates worth supporting then this candidate may have won my support.
 * 7)  MarkBernstein
 * 8) * As the candidate seems to have expected not to win the necessary votes and is thus using his candidacy as a personal soapbox, this election is not the venue to offer comment on him to fulfill his expectations.
 * 9)  Kevin Gorman
 * 10) * See.
 * 11)  Hawkeye7
 * 12) * Was desysopped in a recent ArbCom case. See Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility_enforcement.
 * 13)  Thryduulf
 * 14) * Standing ArbCom member up for re-election. Given the ineffectiveness of ArbCom recently, let's give other candidates a try.
 * 15)  LFaraone
 * 16) * Standing ArbCom member up for re-election. Given the ineffectiveness of ArbCom recently, let's give other candidates a try.
 * 17)  Kirill Lokshin
 * 18) * Among his first admin actions coming back from a wikibreak was to make a controversial arbitration enforcement block which was one of the factors that led to the current ArbCom case Arbitration Enforcement 2. See Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration_enforcement_2.
 * 19)  GorillaWarfare
 * 20) * Supports certain political activism such as feminism even to the detriment of the encyclopedia, as shown in various venues such as the Lightbreather case. Given that many of us see that ArbCom is likely to have a gender/feminism-related case to deal with during the upcoming term, why support a candidate who will likely just have to recuse from that case?
 * 21)  Gamaliel
 * 22) * Problematic Signpost editorial on the gender/feminism issue. See Wikipedia Signpost/2015-10-21/Editorial, including the comments on the page about the editorial.
 * 23)  Hullaballoo Wolfowitz
 * 24) * The Arbitration Committee is meant to resolve conflicts, not make them worse. Also, when his talk page was archived due to the excessive size that caused editors' browsers to crash when trying to leave him a message, he reverted that archival claiming it is his right to allow his talk page to reach such excessive length. See Administrators' noticeboard/Archive267